The tools I used:

• Flashdevelop (IDE)
• Flashpunk (Game library)
• Photoshop
• Audition (sound editing)
• Cubase (music)
• Chronolapse (timelapse recording)

I decided early on to make it atmospherical, and I put a lot of focus on the effects, sounds, music and animation.

What went wrong:

My computer kept crashing throughout the weekend, I think it crashed 8 times in total, which was really annoying. Fortunately I didn’t loose much work.

I waited far too long to implement basic things like getting hurt, dieing and winning, which meant I had to rush that in in the last couple of hours. The basic gameplay challenge when fighting the ravens is not that hard or fun, I should have worked more on that, as well as added more kinds of enemies, and perhaps a boss. It would also make the game more fun if I added some sort of progression, like new abilities.

The story is intentionally vauge, but only because I didn’t have time to flesh it out. It might add to the mystery and mood, I’m not sure. I would really have liked to have time to add a proper ending.

If you miss one of the spheres, you have to go back and find it. I wanted to have some sort of checkpoint, where to pass you would need to complete the part of the game behind you, but I didn’t get around to it. This also means you can win the game in different places, which is maybe cool, but…

What went right:

I think the strongest part of the game is the atmosphere. The rain and lightning effects really add to the mood. I’m also happy with the graphics, and especially the animation, considering I haven’t done that much before. The music is simple but effective, I didn’t go crazy despite listening to it for 10 hours straight.

The player physics feel pretty good, although the attacking part can use some more work. I’m proud of the healing mechanic although it isn’t used to such a big extent.

The camera doesn’t follow the player all the time, instead it snaps to 32×24 tile screens. This was an experiment, and I think it turned out ok. Because the screens are predetermined, you have more control over the scenes the player will see, and can tailor each scene to look as best it can. Of course, it’s also a limitation, and can be irritating for the player when navigating small passages for example.

I made the level as one big png-image in photoshop, where each pixel corresponds to one 10×10 pix tile. This made it really easy to edit, and because it was one single big image, I could quickly see how the whole world looked together. In order to see where each screen in the game was positioned, I just filled the image with helper rectangles. It worked suprisingly well.
Here is the final world image scaled up a bit (Warning: SPOILERS!): world.png

The auto-tiling was a thing I threw together in a hackish manner, but it worked really well too, and supports additional tilesets easily given an offset to the base tile (solid tile).

Summary:

I’m happy with the result. The graphics are simple but effective, the atmosphere is good, sound and music works, the gameplay could be better but is ok, and it’s a completed game! I focused on stuff I usually don’t, and think I learned a whole lot. You can try it out here: PLAY!

Here is the entry page, go rate it.
http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-22/?action=rate&uid=2311

Bonus:

Some concept art I made while trying to come up with an idea.

Brief summary and screen shots are included with the entry, of course, so I’ll use this space to mention some other things:

First, what went right:  Most everything!  I made a lot of lovely art, got most-all of my intended game mechanics implemented within the time limit, and got a playable game out of an already otherwise very busy weekend!  I learned some new useful programming tricks and now have a MUCH better understanding of how to effectively use SpriteGroups in pygame, which helps greatly with streamlining code.  Hooray for me!  Also it’s my damn birthday, so double-hooray!

What didn’t go as planned?  Well… I didn’t have any time for sfx/music, which would have been nice.  I also wasn’t able to add all the text screens I wanted for a narrative, but that’s actually less than 10 minutes additional work there, so I’ll have it for a post-judging version.  A few other little details: Cars on the road, maybe some time/score mechanism, possibly even predators?  Hadn’t put any thought into that last one really… just an idea that existed.  There’s also still some awkwardness with people’s movements that wasn’t fully polished and makes the games slower and more frustrated than it’s meant to be… I really want to redo some of their pathing logic when I get more time.  I also didn’t have time to add a few little in-game decorations I was considering adding… wouldn’t have really made much of a difference except visually… and without the improved navigation it would have made things slower, so maybe it’s for the better.

OH YEAH!  I also need to mention!  Did you notice?!  All the maps in the game are procedurally generated!  Isn’t that awesome?  Yeah.  I’m bad-ass like that.  Random roads, trees, buildings, ponds… people navigating between them… it’s pretty dang awesome.  Sometimes you start out right next to Mommy… sometimes insanely far away; I would like to make that less random and perhaps make it something like a difficulty setting?  Changing the map size and the number of each thing in it is trivially easy, so I could easy adjust for desired complexity.

Anyways,  yeah.  Please play my game if you haven’t yet!  And vote on it!  And more importantly, give me some feedback!  I want to make the best games possible, so comments and constructive criticism are incredibly helpful for me.  Thanks

VOXTERIUM

Now to play some games!

Unless there’s time to add just one… more… thing….

Now to package everything up, compile my timelapese, post a gameplay video…. and

crash….

hard…

It was nowhere near what I wanted it to be; no audio, no real gameplay other than a quick boss fight, no titles, no ending… But I guess the graphics could be a lot worse.

I’m going to work on my game more tomorrow and probably enter it as a jam entry, too. I’ve also got to edit my timelapse together. But now, sleep.

Are you up to the task??

Only one way to find out.

Don’t get carried away.

This competition has finally gotten me to complete a game. Until now I was a game-finishing virgin.

I want to thank all who were involved – it was great.

You can see my entry here:

http://blog.megastructure.org/2009/12/leaving-satisfactoria/

Have the character in, he moves pretty well and is quite fun to fly around. The theme is accounted for. I have him dying and he’s able to move to other levels. (With cool transitions.)

In addition I’ve managed to add one “enemy” (he is a helpless guy who runs around).

Tomorrow I hope to have more challenging stuff and eventually build some levels. If I’m lucky I’ll get sound in.